Game Review

Eduardo the Samurai Toaster Review

One of the benefits of digital media distribution is the chance developers get to stretch their limbs and explore some creative paths often overlooked or avoided. Step in Eduardo The Samurai Toaster, a game with a concept very much out of the ordinary. It’s in good company though, as Wiiware has certainly had its share of strange titles. But fear not: Eduardo has the toast behind it to set it aside from the crowd, not just because it’s odd, but also because it’s quite fun.

Eduardo The Samurai Toaster is a run-and-gun action title, but not of the usual variety. Instead of guns and swords you’ll use toaster pastries and your little toaster handles; instead of the common roundup of enemies you’ll be facing carrots, bees with sunglasses, and strudels aplenty. Of course while the settings may be strange, the gameplay remains a fairly standard affair for the genre: after selecting your difficulty and number of lives you’ll be tossed into the game, and from there it all comes down to destroying everything in your path.

The game controls NES-style, with your Wii remote in the horizontal position. It’s all fairly straightforward stuff, and the only genuine complaint you might conjure is the lack of any motion control functionality. Honestly though, with as much action taking place as there is in the game, the inclusion would have likely hindered the game.

You can shoot in many directions, even below if needed. By picking up different ammo packs you can change up your shots as well, with rapid-fire shots, spread shots, homing missiles, and my personal favorite: the large puffy cloud of death. Ammo is essential to playing, as without it you’ll have to hammer the fire button with minimal results, but thankfully it’s in abundant supply, though at times you may find yourself in a jam with only standard shots at your disposal.

Through the course of the game you’ll encounter quite a bit of level variety. For the most part you’ll be trekking it on foot, but a handful of levels offer some diversions. Sadly, the game is quite short, and can (and should) be completed in a sitting. Some may find this off-putting, but ultimately it makes sense: the initial play-through is not meant to be the end of your experience, but rather only the beginning. Going back for more on harder difficulties or with friends will keep your experience going long after the credits roll (which happens to be as soon as you boot it up).

It’s a fairly challenging game overall, but how hard exactly is mostly up to you, as there is a large range of customization available on difficulty setup at your disposal. If you simply want to see what the game has to offer, you can create a manageable run-through; if you want your fingers to bleed, you can do that as well. It might be lacking in levels, but there can be little complaining about the title's level of challenge, because it can be whatever you want it to be.

If you're feeling lonely, the game features a drop-in cooperative multiplayer function, a nice touch as it adds quite a bit of replay value to the experience - provided you have friends of course. If you're feeling a bit of animosity towards your fellow man, you can opt for friendly fire and screw each other up at any opportunity, and as the title contains no alternate game modes for battling purposes it's a welcome feature for those who like to screw up their friends. You know who you are.

What really ignites Eduardo The Samurai Toaster is its presentation. The visuals and the audio are a treat to see and hear, a rarity for games as small as this. The graphics are extremely varied as the levels go by, and all work towards an overall unique and pleasant game to look at. The music is equally good, if not more so. The tracks represent the source material quite well, and the quality of the audio is superb. Coming from someone who picks game music to pieces, consider that a huge compliment.

Eduardo is not without its faults of course. Even over the short course of the game, things can get a bit repetitive, and mashing the 1 button on your Wii Remote can get frustrating. Additionally, while local multiplayer is great, it would have been nice to have some sort of online functionality: online multiplayer or leaderboards would have really pumped the experience to a higher level. Without said features Eduardo is still great, but had they been included it would have easily risen a rank or two.

Conclusion

Overall, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster stands as yet another great asset to the Wiiware service. While not perfect, it provides a fun experience for multiple players, plus one of the best presentations any Wiiware title to date has received. If you’re a fan of the genre, or simply curious of this highly unusual concept, then consider Eduardo a must have for your digital library.

You guys ever notice how IGN always seems to give Wii ware games horrible reviews while this site is more generous and gives the games the review they deserve? I should really stop paying attention to anything on IGN. They think this game is mediocre. I have a feeling they just hate anything not affiliated with Microsoft or Sony.

Gameplay looks generic and repetitive and it also looks like they didn't get the - interesting - art style down all the time. The grass, for one, looks stupid.For me they had to nail either one of those and I would've gotten it =/

@ Link79: "You guys ever notice how IGN always seems to give Wii ware games horrible reviews while this site is more generous and gives the games the review they deserve?"

If you look a Metacritics or Gamerankings you could also see that Nintendolife give WiiWare games sometimes the highest score of all. One of the reason is probably that this here is a Nintendo website, so they don't compare the games with the ones from XBLA and PSN and have accordingly other expectations.

It isn't as positive as I had hoped, but I am still considering it. I like the effort, and love the art. When I think of a game I can enjoy, I really just want something fun to play. The game, despite the repetitiveness, looks fun. I just feel like I could find something better with more bang for my buck. But I really want to support Semnat, and hope that they keep trying to make good games. If I were the team for Semnat, I would use the criticism and just go balls out on another game. Give the people what they want. Trust me, it will work.But I still may buy this game =)

I definitely intend to check this out. You can never have too many run-and-gun games; Contra ReBirth really isn't any longer at 5 levels, though in that game you do have high scores to pursue, which I think is something that shouldn't have been omitted from the toaster title.

Question: why do this site use the wonderful Zoombox plugin for pictures on news articles, where you can click any picture and have it zoom in nicely in a little overlay, but on game reviews clicking the images always take you to a new page? I, for one, hate having to go to another page and then hit the back button in order to view each image in a review; there's nothing preventing you from using the Zoombox feature here as well so that we can quickly zoom in on images while reading the review and not having to navigate to a new page and back again.

800 points for a 2-4 hour game is about right. Having the option to customize the difficulty and the drop-in 4 player mode are a great plus. Music and art are just great and one wonders how the game managed to stay below the 40 MB limit...

I can't say that the graphics (as seen in demo videos) look that good to me. It looks pretty crappy, in fact. I'm not sure that the gameplay looks like it would help matters. I'm just not seeing it. I wouldn't mind trying it, but not for 800 points. I really, really wish we had demos on WiiWare.

Here is the thing. You can go see a movie for 9 bucks where I'm from. With those nine dollars, you get a 2 hour or less experience, and then it's over. Here, you get a 2 hour plus experience. You keep the game forever and can always come back to it. 8 bucks is really cheap. I think this game should be bought. I don't see much risk in spending 8 bucks on a decent game.

I didn't mention it because I didn't use it a lot. I guess later on I may find it necessary but in my playing time I didn't see that it was essential to succeeding. I'll have to play some more and experiment with the mechanic.

HOT-ROD brings up a great point. 8 bucks is cheaper than 6 pack of decent beer and that goes thru you in less time than it takes to play this game. Eduardo is clearly geared toward a group of friends looking for something they can all enjoy together and have a great time sharing. Isn't that the point of WiiWare? Surely that's worth paying the miniscule $8. Cheap-o's.

Good review and an honest-to-goodness spot-on score. It's not a perfect game and if there's ever a sequel, there's a lot of room for expansion and improvement. However, for what it is, it's a very enjoyable game with plenty of personality, gorgeous artwork, solid music and smooth, crisp gameplay. An old-school, make-up-your-own-backstory arcade run'n'gun which is certainly never short on fun if you get a gang of friends together to blaze through it on one of the higher difficulties. I look forward very much to seeing what Semnat Studios come up with next!

Agree with many others here, this is a fabulous review and all this weight some put on cost is a little strange since most games aren't much over 10 bucks. Ten bucks for any game that is fun for over 2 hours, plus other replay opportunities, is a great deal. 5 is an even greater deal, it's only when a 10 dollar game REALLY sucks that cost should come into play.

There is a much deeper point I'd like to make about the release of this game. Beyond the look and appeal of this game, Eduardo represents something very important about the gaming industry. Since the release of WiiWare and the growing popularity of XBox Live Arcade, a new era of Independent game development has started to surface. Up until recently, the chance of an indie game company making a game for a major system like Nintendo was next to impossible. Here you have four guys who put out an exceptional game from what I understand was an extremely low budget. The fact that they even were able to get it up on WiiWare means that innovation and expression are now possible for anyone who has a passion for games. Unless we take the time to appreciate and support indie developers like Semnat, this opportunity will vanish before our eyes. It's the same for any industry where independent companies struggle to get their voice out. This isn't just a small, okay looking shooter with no back story. This game represents the tables turning in the market in OUR favor. I, for one, want to support that. Fight the Man.

I continue my drive to support the indie developers and give as much coverage of the games as possible. Because as you said, it's nice to see these companies releasing their games on the major consoles. I think the XBLA and WiiWare services have been the highlight of the current generation of consoles for me personally.

Having said that, this one didn't knock my socks off. Maybe I had this one a bit too hyped up in my mind, as this and Super Meat Boy have been my two most-wanted WiiWare titles for a long time. Either way, I look forward to seeing what's next up for Semnat.

Playing the game, I can see why it wasn't amazing. I agree with the score it got on both here, and ign. It really depends on how u feel about it. But at 8 dollars, it really is nothing. I can skip dinner to afford to pay for this game. So it is definitely worth my points. I just think the content needs to be upped a ton for Semnat's next game =) Good luck, and damn decent job.

Sure, you can spend the same amount of cash for something that lasts for just 2 hours but really, what's the point of that comparison? Does that mean it's a "good" investment rather than "better than something"? No.

Don't forget that you can also spend less for longer and more polished Wiiware or VC games. I'm not saying that it's a bad game, but I think it should have been priced at a more modest 500 points.

A plus for Eduardo hast o be the 4 player drop in which pretty much doubles your play time if you finish the game in single player and then do it again with 1-3 friends or relatives. The 800 points price seems about right when you take the game as a whole. My brother and sister loved it as well and also own the game. Even my boss ended up getting it (which will make it funny to explain to his wife why their 3 month old daughter is in front of the TV looking at a toaster fighting bees, carrots and the like).

I really enjoy this game, but it won't accept my GameCube controllers. This is the first game I've found on Wii that accepts Classic Controllers but not GameCube Controllers. Thanks to that oversight, I can only play with 1 other player, while we each have a very awkwardly positioned throw button (They should have made throws done by A instead of B on the Wiimote configuration or at least allowed us to customize it). By the way, no, it's still not worth it to me to get a Classic Controller or another Wiimote or two.

@Mickeymac - When you get into the later levels, even on easy, it is anything but slow-paced and dull.

@Bulbasaurus Rex: Mmm, I've played it with the Wiimote and the Classic Controller and while indeed the throw button is better in the Classic Controller, I actually finished the game start to finish with the Wiimote and never found it hard to reach the B button.

Finished it once in two player mode, once in one player mode and this weekend I'll give it a go in full out 4 player.

This game looks awfully interesting. I might have to give it a download. Of course, I'll have to get an SD card first.

EDIT: I just got an SD card and bought 3000 Wii Points. Now, it is between this and World of Goo. I think I might just pick them both up.

EDIT: I just downloaded this game today.(July 7) It is pretty fun. It can be completed quickly though. It took me a little over two hours to complete this game on Normal Mode with at first three lives, but then I changed it to six. I have tried multiplayer co-op and it is very fun. I say it might be a bit better when playing with another player. I have only tried it with two players(another person and I), but I think it would be a lot more fun with the more people you have. I only have two Wiimotes and so unless another person brings one, I can only do two-player. The music of the game is exceptional! It goes perfectly with the different levels. Next I will probably download World of Goo.

The game is boring. Played it with 2 other players and we beat it in 1:34hr. It's just attacking the same monsters over and over again in the most boring level designs ever conceived. The effects for some of the levels were actually distracting more than beautiful, they hurt the eyes and sometimes you couldn't see were you were going. Not recommended.